


Terry Cullen
Aug 23, 2022
Kenya
Categories:
Food Security, Farming, Sustainability, Africa, Non-Profit, Women
Their motto got my attention. Their mission intrigued me and I had to find out more. Kickstart International, a non-profit organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, designs, markets, and sells low-cost irrigation technology to impoverished people in sub-Saharan Africa to help them become self-sufficient and lift them out of poverty.
Four out of five African farmers are small scale and those in sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable to drought with the inability to feed themselves resulting in extreme poverty, malnutrition, and high infant mortality rates. Interestingly, only 4% of the farmland is irrigated and the vast majority of farmers rely on rainfall. Climate change is worsening drought conditions.
Kickstart is trying to change this by supplying low-cost technology to farmers so they can pump water from the ground, irrigate their crops, eliminate their dependency on sporadic rainfall patterns and dramatically change their fortunes. Farmers are able to plant higher-value crops with more certainty they can harvest them. Crops can be grown year-round.
The benefits are far-reaching. It increases income for some of the poorest people in the world. Income increases an average of 500% according to Kickstart. The increase in prosperity allows people to take care of their health and get healthcare when needed. Farmers can buy more and better equipment to further build up their farms. Farming families can educate their children, secure better housing, feed their families and so much more. Since 70% of farmers and farm workers are women, any effort to improve the lives of farmers will empower women.
Kickstart estimates that if 20% of the Sub-Saharan farmland is irrigated (vs 4% now), then widespread hunger could be eliminated. Rarely does one find a simple solution that can have such far-reaching benefits. Over 250,000 farmers are using Kickstart’s smart irrigation technologies to feed 14 million people generating $210 million in wealth lifting 1.3 million people out of poverty.
Sometimes, the simplest solutions to problems in our communities can have the greatest impact. Kickstart's experience bears out that it always begins by working with the people most affected by a problem. No one knows better the problem and the potential solutions than the ones that are hurt the most by it. That is where solution begins. Research, technology, leadership, financing can advance solutions and bring them to fruition. Unfortunately, so many well-intentioned people skip the first part of finding solutions. Perhaps blinded by a strictly data-driven approach and/or “we know best”, they influence money, leadership, and technology into solutions that do not work.
How well does your hometown communicate with each other? How well do you know all the people who call your hometown their hometown, their values, their aspirations, their problems, and their opportunities? Have you ever participated in a conversation with someone in your community that you would not normally connect with on a regular basis? Encourage your local leaders, your schools, and your religious institutions to provide the leadership that can connect diverse people in your community to share and listen on issues, to have a celebration, mourn a loss, find a solution, build something, support an idea and share a memory. Fear keeps us apart and it will take leadership to overcome those obstacles. In this place of shared community, or common unity, then, and only then, do we understand that we are all one and that is always the basis for finding solutions to the problems that hurt us, always, all ways.
Photo by Omotayo Tajudeen on Pexels.
Kickstart is based in Nairobi, Kenya with offices in San Francisco, USA, Lusaka, Zambia and Lagos, Nigeria. Kickstart has a Platinum Seal of Transparency Rating on Guidestar, the world's largest source. of information on non-profit organizations. To learn more about Kickstart and donate, please visit the link below.
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Catalog #:
0822.100.02.082322